Dishwashers of various types have been proposed wherein items are placed in a wash chamber which is filled and emptied according to desired wash sequences. Recently, dishwasher manufacturers have focused even more on efficiency in implementing new designs. Thus, an amount of electricity, an amount of detergent, and an amount of water used are all monitored in an attempt to provide efficient and environmentally sensitive machines.
Certainly, an amount of water must be used to wash and rinse items within the dishwasher. It would be desirable to minimize this amount by controlling the operation of the dishwasher. However, if enough water is not used at certain times in the cycle, items may not be cleaned or rinsed sufficiently due to inadequate water supply for intended operation. Conventional dishwasher controls often use timers to determine how long certain items within the dishwasher should run.
For example, a pump may be turned on for a given amount of time to fill or drain the wash chamber. However, due to variations in local water pressure, potential clogging, etc., such timing control may provide effective yet less than optimal performance in some applications. For, example, if a sump is completely drained as a set time of pump operation has been performed, the pump may make undesirable noise. Alternatively, if a sump is partially clogged, running a pump for a set amount of time might not fully drain the sump as desired. Therefore, simply operating a fluid handling device within a dishwasher for a given amount of time may not provide the desired performance in all situations or installations.
Accordingly, other designs for flow sensing and control devices and related dishwashers including those addressing one or more drawbacks of conventional devices and dishwashers would be welcome.